Cliffs
by kimanioverthinks
Summary: She's always been more like the waves anyways. LeahCentric. Slight Leah/Harry. No incest.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, or its plot and characters. It is all property of S. Meyer. This is a fanfiction based on her work, not for the intent of any monetary gain.

* * *

**

**People expect Leah Clearwater to go out in a cloud of smoke, with lots of noise. People expect no notice. People expect an explosion.**

Shows how much people know about Leah Clearwater.

She likes cliffs. Always has liked cliffs.

She's more of a diver anyways.

She's been in love with the speed, the rushing wind, the exhilaration and the adrenaline. It's just like running downhill.

-

"Daddy, look!" a girl--about eight years old, with two dark pigtails--cries, grinning up at Harry Clearwater. "It's a seagull."

"Yes, princess, it's a seagull," Harry laughs, petting Leah gently on the shoulder. He tilts his chin up to the clouds and takes a deep breath. The whole place smells salty. It's the smell he's grown to associate with calm. He takes Leah here at least twice a week since Seth is still too young.

"I want to be a seagull," Leah says softly, smiling fondly at the white bird, shot through with a single streak of grey. "They must live happy lives."

"Perhaps…" Harry's mind is far away, tracing the shores of bluer oceans, with whiter sands—places he'd like to take his children one day, before they're too old to appreciate the innocence of the tides, they lack of fault or taint. La Push doesn't deserve to be a real beach anyways.

"But you are more like the waves, Leah," he whispers in the deep tenor of his elder-voice, and the sound is carried away in the salty air.

Leah hears, but doesn't understand.

-

Sometimes, if she listens closely enough, Leah can still hear her father's whispers. Numerous whispers. The secrets he dared whisper to none but the ocean, the only place he believed could truly keep his secrets; the fears for his children's—and his tribe's—lives, his deep longing for larger oceans, and whiter sands, the secrets buried so deeply not even pack plural would have been able to unearth.

She thinks she hears his whisper from the choppy waves, deep and slightly wavering, calling her to him. She wishes he was still here.

She thinks maybe she might forget him; the contours of his face, the thick stubble on his jaw, the wrinkles around his eyes. She's afraid her subconscious will tuck him so far away that the tides cannot reach.

She's afraid to lose him.

She's afraid to drown in the nothingness that is left by the gaping hole where he used to fit.

-

She used to fit perfectly against his side, when she was littler. But now she's almost as tall as he is, but he holds her tight anyways.

She likes this because she doesn't think she can deal with much more change. She likes the stability he offers.

He takes her out to the cliffs, and they sit together and dangle their bare feet off the edge. He jokes about being unable to get back up—arthritis, and she tells him that'll she'll carry him if she has to, but he'd better get his feet over the edge.

She's always felt so very comfortable like this. In the 'Inbetween' as she and her father used to call it—the point between earth and sea, where they haven't quite realized it yet. The point where there's always two options.

She's finding that everything in life isn't always this clear.

It's never just earth or sea with love, is it?

-

She's never understood how he could trust Jacob so infallibly. He would always say it was because of his lineage, but she knew otherwise.

Jacob was more like Harry than Billy.

You have to look closely, beyond the appearance, and dissect Jacob thoroughly. His loyalty—something drilled into every Quileute, but particularly strong in Harry and Jacob.

And their love.

Leah never quite knew two people who shared the same belief in love. Harry and Jacob.

They didn't believe in _one_ love. They believed that a single person could love more than one person in their lifetime—often even at the same time. Harry's love was split so many times, into so many bodies of love, that Leah often used to believe there wasn't quite enough to share.

But it was.

And Harry's love was the ocean. The sea. It never did run dry, or stop ebbing.

Even in death, Harry's love was a constant. A blanket of warmth Leah could draw for—from the sea—during the chill.

-

She'd go out in the tides. She'd wash the shores clean of her.

She was sure of it.

In her last breath, she saw him. And she heard him.

"You are more like the waves, Leah."

And they are both gone.

To where the sea meets the earth. And it is there you can find them today. Together—arms linked, with the tides rushing over their bare feet—hanging on the precipice.


End file.
